The reporter Stuart Harris, the inventor Tom Granger and the broadcaster Paul Bridges tested four clock radios currently available to pick a good one.
1. The "dual alarm function' that is advertised with this model does not allow you, as Stuart Harris first supposed, to be woken by the buzzer (звонок), have a sleep and then finally be driven out of bed. The instruction booklet advises you to use this function to set two different wake-up times, one for work days and one for weekends, but whose life is programmed to this extent? Since this model is relatively cheap, the inclusion of a cassette player is quite a bargain — you can fall asleep to your own soothing tapes and wake up to a day without news. The men all thought the quality of the radio excellent, too - if only the whole thing was smaller. It's as big as a rugby ball. Paul Bridges said, "Any clock radio I buy has to leave enough space on the bedside table for my keys, wallet, glasses and telephone. Anyway, I'm completely paranoid and always book a wake-up call in case the alarm doesn't go off."
2. Tom Granger described this model with its extra built-in lamp as "incredibly tasteless' in the way it's made. He complained that he had to read the instruction booklet twice before he could get it to work; the clock kept jumping from 12.00 to 0200 so he had to go round again. The light was certainly hard to position; you would never be able to read by it — it only shines on the clock, which is illuminated anyway. Paul Bridges said he was 'very amused by the lamp idea but agreed that the radio was hard to tune (настроить). Interestingly, however, this model is the third most popular on the market.
3. Clearly aimed at young people, with its brightly coloured casing (корпус), this one appealed to the child in Tom Granger. "I would choose this one because it doesn't disappear into the background like the others," he said. In fact, the traditional design of the controls made it the only one the men managed to set up without reading the instruction booklet. Too bad the alarm is allowed a 20-minute margin for error; the manual (инструкция) notes, "the alarm may sound about 10 minutes earlier or later than the pre-set time". Paul Bridges made fun of such a notion, adding that this model was "terribly difficult" and, indeed, "completely useless".
4. The simplest and cheapest of all the models tested, this scored points with Tom Granger because it 'seemed very standard and took up little space', but also because it has old-fashioned dial tuning. "It's more intuitive to set up. With modern push-button tuning you're never really sure if you've pressed all the buttons in the right order so you can't have confidence that the thing will actually work. He accepted, however, that manufacturers had been obliged to improve the quality of radios because of the advent (введение) of button-tuning. Stuart Harris thought the tuning rather approximate, as did Paul Bridges, but they agreed that the radio quality was fine. The buzzer on this model certainly works; it succeeded in getting them out of bed in just two beeps!
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